I'm going to try to blog tonight, before I fall asleep. I got busy with an unexpected, but interesting, conversation on msn, and so now it's almost 2 hours later than I wanted to do this, lol.

Where to start....

BATS!

My bats are back! Boy are they back! Jeepers creepers, are they back! I have more bat droppings outside my sliding door than I think I've ever seen at one time. There just may be more of them there now than ever before. I'm still glad they're there, just not so sure about the possible numbers of them, lol. With the air conditioner going, I haven't had a chance to listen for them. I was thinking about shutting my a/c off tomorrow since the high will only by 83F, but then it's climbing right back up into the 90's, so I think I'll just keep it on. Lucky me. I would really rather have it off. Saves me money when I don't run the a/c.

It's getting closer and closer to my vacation days! Wooooo hooooo! I'm heading up to the twin cities (MN) on July 27, returning sometime on Aug 1. I'm looking forward to taking these few days away from work and everything. The traffic here has been running me ragged (I was gonna say bats, but I wondered if you'd think it was the bats instead.) Not only do I have to deal with all the commuting traffic 5 days a week, but I got an extra dose of bumper-to-bumper traffic Sunday night. I was visiting a friend for her daughter's 5th birthday party...bbq, pinata, presents, cake & ice cream, the whole bit. By the time I left there it was after 8:15pm, and the trip which should have taken me about an hour 15 minutes, took an hour 45. I was not happy walking in the door at 10pm, with laundry still to do, plus being all wired up from the traffic. The particular tollway I was on has THREE toll booths under construction AT THE SAME TIME. I was only going through two of them, but the first one I went through, had an 8 mile backup. Yes, you read that correctly, 8 mile backup (almost 13 km). Two lanes, no exits, nowhere to go, just me and all the other cars crawling. This is one of the major tollways people use coming from Wisconsin, so I'm sure there were some weekend travellers trying to get home. And poor me, just sitting there, complaining to my aunt on the phone that I deal with this 5 days a week, I don't want it on the weekend too. Turns out, there were only 4 lanes to pay the toll, one for I-PASS users (transponder and automatic deduction of toll from your acct), and three manual lanes. Well, our I-PASS lane was posted to be a 5 mph lanes, that's the suggested speed to go through it. We had to slow down so much for that, plus for all the people paying manual tolls, that we were backed up for what seemed forever.

Then to top it all off, the toll has been doubled at this particular booth. They are re-configuring the toll booths in each direction, so once it's done, the westbound side pays two tolls instead of the original three, and the eastbound pays two instead of the original three, with one in each direction doubling in cost. This is supposedly to help keep traffic moving. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Same opinion I have about all the other work on every other tollway in the area. I have yet to see an improvement from any of the toll booths they've redone. I'm expecting my commute will never drop below an hour, even once everything is done and construction is done in 6 years. OMG, in 6 years, I hope to be the hell out of here, someplace where they don't DO road construction! Does such a place exist? Either that, or I'll have grown wings so I can just fly to work and not worry about traffic.